Sunday, October 30, 2011

Beauty for Ashes

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me... to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.
-Isaiah 61:1,3


This will simply be me sharing a story with you. About a month ago, I was in Florida on a business trip. We were all very excited about being there, as it is much more enjoyable to go to the Florida coast for business than it is to go to most other places (like Cincinnati). However, one of the days that I was there, I was awakened quite early in the morning in anger and frustration. I won't really get into the reasons why (they're not especially relevant), but imagine your times when you feel the lowest. Frustration, anger, feelings of worthlessness seeping through every part of your being. You can't really feel much lower. You want to cry to yourself, and you have no idea why God would allow you to feel this way! It was about 5:00-5:30 in the morning (I intended to get up at about 7:00), and I didn't really think that I was going to be able to go back to sleep.

I went outside to my balcony, thinking that, though I couldn't go all the way back to sleep, I may be able to get a little catnap in. I was right - I was able to fall asleep for about 5 minutes, but then I woke back up and realized something. It was just starting to get light outside, the sunrise was about to happen, and I had nothing pressing that would prevent me from watching it. I went ahead and went down to the beach to walk along it as the sun was rising. I was treated to this:

God's Beauty for my Ashes

It was very refreshing to enjoy God's beauty and feel his comfort at one of my lowest points.  I'm not going to pretend that suddenly I felt better, life was meaningful, and I was ready to go skipping all the way to heaven, but I did feel like God was there watching over me.  And that He cared.